Which Stabilizer Tech Is Best? We Test Them All

July 31, 2022
Which Stabilizer Tech Is Best? We Test Them All
Posted in: All Film Science
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It might surprise you to learn that an $800 GoPro is smoother than a $27,000 professional rig… and what's more, it might just always be that way.

Shaky footage is something we’ve all had to deal with, whether you shoot on an iPhone or
a cinematic camera. The temptation is to run the footage through Premiere, add some warp stabilizer and call it a day. Which works…sometimes. And other times you end up with a jello-y, blurry mess.

So how do you get smooth cinematic footage every time? To understand that, we need
to understand how stabilization actually works.

In this episode of Film Science, we deep dive into every type of stabilization and find out why it’s almost impossible to get perfect. Watch the video, or follow along below as we break down the science.

When we look at all the types of stabilizers, we’re dealing with 2 main factors: the method of motion detection and the method of motion countering. How each stabilization method performs these two functions causes some big differences in how your footage ends up looking.

 

To test the different kinds of stabilization, we attached an iPhone 13 Pro, GoPro Max, A7sIII with IBIS, EOSR with Warp Stabilizer and a C200 on a pro-level gimbal. Each uses a different method of stabilization to compensate for the camera shake. We tested these across a range of shots - running push, orbit, tracking, rotation - and found out which circumstances each performs better in.

 

From the outset, it was pretty clear that the GoPro Max was the smoothest across all situations, with the iPhone and the gimbal trailing a little behind. The IBIS on the Sony freaked out for any large movements and seemed to stabilize for a second, shake and then stabilize again. And warp stabilizer at 50 percent? Well, it warped alright.

The most interesting outcome was that each method of stabilization resulted in its own quirks. So what causes these differences? It's all in how they detect and counter the movement.

How Detection Works

For motion detection, stabilizers use either a motion-sensing chip called an IMU or they calculate the motion using feature recognition within the image.

The IMU is a collection of sensors with a gyroscope and accelerometer that allows the device to know how it's moving, rotating and at what speed. They’re tiny, relatively cheap and in so many electronic devices these days. Most importantly, they offer a real-time readout that can be countered to reduce or remove movement.

 

If you don’t have this data, for instance using something like Warp Stabilizer, you’ll instead be detecting motion with feature recognition and using objects in the scene to interpolate the motion of the camera. When it comes to the detecting motion, the gyro is just so much better, but you need this data from the camera or gimbal.

The main problem with feature recognition is that sometimes the software gets it wrong. An object moving through the foreground can often throw off the track and the software can't tell the difference between object movement and camera movement, resulting in a very jello-y shot.

While feature tracking is certainly more limited, it's only getting better as the machine learning and algorithms improve. Warp stabilizer today are leagues ahead of where it was when it first launched but none of that is useful without countering the movement.

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Countering the Movement

Once we know our movement, we can counter it in a couple of ways.

● Option 1 - Gimbal

No matter if your gimbal is low-cost or professional grade, they all work in pretty much the same way. Motors across 3 axes rotate to counter the pan, tilt and roll movements leaving us with a camera that is rotationally constant. We've used the Manfrotto 300XM in many of our recent episodes with great results.

Gimbals are great and have become a near essential piece of kit, useful for a wide range of production settings where tracks or a dolly wouldn’t be possible. The problem is they have inherent physical limitations.

As the gimbal counters the movement of the camera, they need to provide an equal and opposite force - something that becomes harder and more expensive the heavier the camera is. Balancing a gimbal properly certainly helps this, but the other issue is that they’re large, heavy and take some skill in operation. Sometimes you just want to go more lightweight and not have to carry one around.

 

●     Option 2 - In-camera with floating element or sensor

Although we often say “floating”, technically that isn’t correct. The camera senses motion and counters it using tiny electromagnets, shifting the image so it appears close to where it was in the previous frame. This can happen in the lens, in the sensor, or a combination of the two.

These sensors are small and built into most modern cameras, but they are also limited in how much they can counter movement. Because they are built into the body itself, there’s limited latitude so they don’t deal well with large movements. They are perfect for countering the shake of your hands in the pursuit of getting more crisp images, but won’t be much use while mountain biking down a hill.

We saw this limitation clearly in our tests. In-camera sensors deal with push shots and translation movement, but rotating the camera past about six degrees in each direction caused it to hit its limit. For those movements, we need something stronger.

 

●     Option 3 - Digital stabilization

Digital Stabilization can be done purely after the shoot has finished with scene analysis like Warp Stabilizer, or aided by the gyroscope in the case of the GoPro, iPhone or Blackmagic’s new gyro-assisted stabilization for the Pocket Cine.

By moving and warping the image, we can create footage that is terrifyingly smooth, but it relies on a few tricks and leads to some limitations. Most digital stabilization relies on taking an image larger than you’ll use in your final.

In the case of the iPhone, you see it crop in by about 30% in video mode. For the GoPro Max, it’s taking a 360 spherical image allowing for a complete rotation. The issue is that when we counter that motion there are often artifacts left in the video. Motion blur looks great in normal video, but once warped it can look weird and make the viewer feel like there is something wrong with the image.

The GoPro gets around this by having a short shutter speed and eliminating the motion blur in the camera. You can always add it in afterwards and it looks...almost correct. This doesn’t work so well in darker or low-light environments though as shutter speed can only go so fast.

Digital stabilization can answer a lot of shake problems, but the trade-off is usually footage looking cinematic.

 

So Why Can’t We Have Both?

To a certain extent, this already exists in mirrorless bodies. The A7sIII has an element of digital stabilization in addition to the IBIS and in-lens stabilization, it’s just not quite as remarkable as the GoPro because it exists at a different end of the spectrum. You are unlikely to strap one of these on your head and jump off a cliff.

It’s also inherently limited by the camera itself. The motion blur and aperture tricks GoPro can employ won’t work on a mirrorless camera. Combine this with issues of rolling shutter, a setup and lens distortion profile that can constantly change and the fact we aren’t shooting a 360 image, and you’re left with the fact that maybe a purpose-built action camera will always just be smoother.

So what’s the answer? Use the right stabilization for the right job.

If you shoot action sports, buy a GoPro. If you walk around and record home videos, use an iPhone. And if creating cinematic masterpieces is the goal, use a proper gimbal. Learning how each method of stabilization works is key to getting smooth footage, whatever your project.

Thanks for following along to this episode of Film Science, we hope you found this interesting and learned some practical tips along the way!

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July 31, 2022

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